News:

The Book of the Diner is well worth preserving. I only wish it had reached a broader audience when it might have mattered more. That is a testament to the blindness of our culture. If there is a future to look back from, one difficult question historians will have to ask is how we let this happen, when so many saw it coming. This site has certainly aggregated enough information and critical thinking to prove that.[/b]

Tech & ScienceFirst Humans in Australia Arrived Thousands of Years Earlier Than We ThoughtBy Hannah Osborne On 7/19/17 at 1:00 PM

Tech & ScienceEvolutionpaleoanthropologyArchaeology

The first humans arrived in Australia up to 15,000 years earlier than previously thought, scientists have announced.

During excavations of the Madjedbebe rock shelter in northern Australia, researchers have found thousands of artefacts, including stone tools, grinding stones and hatchets, showing humans must have been at the site at least 65,000 years ago.

The findings, published in Nature, have major implications for our understanding of early human migration beyond Asia, why Australia’s megafauna went extinct, and, potentially, if these early humans interacted with Homo floresiensis, the mystery “hobbit-like” species found only on the Indonesian island of Flores.

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Madjedbebe is one of the key sites when it comes to the debate of when humans first arrived in Australia. It was first discovered in the 1970s and excavations have taken place at the site ever since. Initial reports indicated human presence in Australia from between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago, but these findings were highly contentious due to questions over the dating techniques used.

At present, estimates for mankind’s arrival in Australia range from between 47,000 and 60,000 years.

Now, however, researchers have excavated thousands more artefacts from Madjedbebe, providing new and robust evidence for when the site was occupied by humans. During the dig, archaeologists found around 11,000 artefacts and matched them to the age of the sediments in which they were found. By doing this, they were able to accurately date them—showing the oldest artefacts were around 65,000 years old.

Lead author Chris Clarkson tells Newsweek: “I have no concerns the dates are incorrect. We have dated thousands of sand grains from dozens of samples across the site and the results show very accurate ages with little mixing.”

He says the artefacts are in good positions, with broken ones not falling between different layers of sediment. “Furthermore, at the front of the shelter there is a dense concentration of rockfall which traps the artefacts in place,” he continues. “These show nice lenses of artefacts that are indicative of numerous episodes of occupation and cannot have moved since the site formed.”

It is thought the first Homo sapiens left Africa around 100,000 years ago, reaching Asia around 70,000 years ago and moving through Egypt and into the Negev Desert. The latest discovery indicates humans made a fairly speedy journey to Australia.

“New Guinea and Australia were joined at this time of very low sea levels, so they could have entered the continent through either Australia or New Guinea or both,” Clarkson says. “Once they had crossed the ocean gaps they could have walked across the intervening land bridge and all the way to Tasmania.”

This early arrival would have meant humans lived alongside Australia’s megafauna, which included a car-sized wombat and a 6,600 lb marsupial, for up to 20,000 years. Scientists do not know exactly why these huge creatures went extinct, but one theory has been that human arrival in Australia played a role in their demise.

The new date of human occupation contradicts this theory. Pushing back the age of first Aboriginal occupation to 65,000 years ago lengthens the period of co-existence of humans and megafauna considerably to perhaps 25,000 years or greater,” Clarkson says. “This makes it extremely unlikely that humans rapidly wiped out all of these large animals. It was a gradual process and the end of a very long process of faunal extinctions in this country, more likely linked to climate change. Humans may however have had some small role, though we have no direct evidence for this.”

Homo floresiensis Reconstruction of Homo floresiensis. Modern humans would have lived alongside the "hobbit" species, scientists have said. Karen Neoh/Flickr

It also means humans may have been in contact with H. floresiensis. This extinct species from the Homo genus was first discovered on Flores in 2003. They were dubbed “hobbits” as they stood at just 1.1 meters in height. For many years, scientists debated whether they had evolved separately and somehow ended up on Flores, or if it evolved from Homo erectus—becoming much smaller due to limited resources. Some scientists suggested it was a deformed human.

Scientists now largely agree H. floresiensis likely came from an early ancestor from Africa and was not connected to H. erectus, as previously thought. This species, however, lived between 50,000 and 190,000 years ago—meaning the first humans in Australia may have come across them at some point.

“It means humans and Homo floresiensis co-existed in the Island Southeast Asia region for thousands of years, but we have no idea if they made contact or not,” Clarkson says. “Humans may have skirted islands on which floresiensis was living. We don't know at this stage if modern humans eventually brought about their demise or not.”

Researchers now plan to re-excavate other archaeological sites in the region to see if they can duplicate the ages seen at Madjedbebe. “Similar kinds of artefacts are known from the base of these sites, so it is very likely they also date to 65,000 years ago,” he says.

In a related News & Views article, Curtis Marean, from Arizona State University, said the findings remind us that Australia “could reveal many other secrets” that will increase our understanding of human colonization and its impact on the environment.

“We now know that modern humans, after they left Africa around 70,000 years ago, dispersed rapidly to a coastal area that became the departure gate for their journey to Australia,” he wrote. “From that launch pad, perhaps some of them envisaged other lands across the water that they could not see. They decided to take a chance and built boats, loading them with both new and tested technologies. Then, with their families, they boarded to embark on a journey of discovery. Sounds familiar—sounds like humans reaching for the stars.”

Tech & ScienceAncient Fossils Reveal the First Humans Emerged 170,000 Years Earlier than We ThoughtBy Hannah Osborne On 9/29/17 at 6:38 AM

Homo sapiens skull. Representational image. Jim Hickcox/Flickr

The first modern humans may have emerged up to 350,000 years ago—170,000 years earlier than previously thought. Analysis of ancient DNA has allowed scientists to trace back the ancestry of people from South Africa to determine when our ancestors split from other hominin species. Their findings consistently point to an early date of divergence, between 350,000 and 260,000 years ago.

How and when modern humans first emerged as a species is a major unanswered question in paleoanthropology because the fossil record is incomplete. At present, the oldest human remains we have date back 195,000 years. But these are not necessarily the first ever Homo sapiens—and the origin of our ancestry remains a mystery.

In a study published in Science, a team of researchers led by Marlize Lombard, from the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, looked at the remains of seven individuals who lived in KwaZulu-Natal between 2,300 and 300 years ago. Three of these lived during the Stone Age, while four others lived 300 to 500 years ago.

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One of the fossils analyzed, known as the Ballito Bay child, was of hunter gatherer descent and would have lived at a time before any migrants had reached South Africa. As a result, his DNA was unaffected by any genetic mixing from other humans from different parts of Africa or Eurasia.

They were able to use the information from the Ballito Bay child, combined with the other individuals, and compare it to other examples of the ancient genome from different times and places.

The findings show modern humans split from earlier groups between 350,000 and 260,000 years ago. "This means that modern humans emerged earlier than previously thought", study author Mattias Jakobsson, a population geneticist at Uppsala University, said in a statement.

Their dating estimates also fit with the fossil record. At least two or three other Homo species are known to have lived in southern Africa during this time. Furthermore, these dates with recent fossil evidence uncovered in Morocco. Scientists found remains from five Homo sapiens individuals that date back to 300,000 years, raising major questions about where the "cradle of humanity" really was.

Study author Carina Schlebusch, also from Uppsala University, said: “Both paleo-anthropological and genetic evidence increasingly points to multi-regional origins of anatomically modern humans in Africa, i.e. Homo sapiens did not originate in one place in Africa, but might have evolved from older forms in several places on the continent with gene flow between groups from different places.”

MIAMI - The world's earliest evidence of grape wine-making has been detected in 8,000-year-old pottery jars unearthed in Georgia, making the tradition almost 1,000 years older than previously thought, researchers said Monday.

Before, the oldest chemical evidence of wine in the Near East dated to 5,400-5,000 BC (about 7,000 years ago) and was from the Zagros Mountains of Iran, said the report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer-reviewed US journal.

The world's very first wine is thought to have been made from rice in China around 9,000 years ago.

"We believe this is the oldest example of the domestication of a wild-growing Eurasian grapevine solely for the production of wine," said co-author Stephen Batiuk, a senior research associate at the University of Toronto.

Scientists on the team came from the United States, Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, Israel and Georgia. They have been working for the past four years to re-analyse archeological sites that were found decades ago.

The fragments of ceramic casks, some decorated with grape motifs and able to hold up to 80 gallons (300 liters), were found at two archeological sites called Gadachrili Gora and Shulaveris Gora, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) south of the Georgian capital Tbilisi.

Researchers used a combination of the latest mass spectrometry and chromatography techniques to identify the ancient compounds. This chemical analysis "confirmed tartaric acid, the fingerprint compound for grape and wine," said the PNAS report.

Researchers also found three associated organic acids - malic, succinic and citric - in the residue from the eight jars.

This "discovery dates the origin of the practice to the Neolithic period around 6,000 BC, pushing it back 600-1,000 years from the previously accepted date," according to the study.

'SOCIAL LUBRICANT'

The Neolithic period began around 15,200 BC in parts of the Middle East and ended between 4,500 and 2,000 BC.

During this era, the latter part of which coincided with the Stone Age, people were beginning to farm, domesticate animals, make polished stone tools, crafts and weaving, researchers said.

"Pottery, which was ideal for processing, serving and storing fermented beverages, was invented in this period together with many advances in art, technology and cuisine," said Batiuk.

"As a medicine, social lubricant, mind-altering substance, and highly-valued commodity, wine became the focus of religious cults, pharmacopeias, cuisines, economics, and society throughout the ancient Near East," he said.

People in Georgia cultivated the Eurasian grapevine, Vitis vinifera, which likely grew abundantly under environmental conditions similar to modern-day France and Italy.

Batiuk said the domestication of the grape "eventually led to the emergence of a wine culture in the region."

"The Eurasian grapevine that now accounts for 99.9 per cent of wine made in the world today, has its roots in Caucasia."

But this might not be the last word, according to lead author Patrick McGovern, scientific director of the biomolecular archeology project for cuisine, fermented beverages, and health at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia.

McGovern, who co-authored the 1996 Nature study that placed the earliest evidence for grape wine in Iran, said the search for the truly oldest artifacts will continue.

"Other sites in the South Caucasus in Armenia and Azerbaijan might eventually produce even earlier evidence for viniculture than Georgia," McGovern said.

"The Taurus Mountains of eastern Turkey are also a prime candidate for further exploration with its monumental sites at Gobekli Tepe and Nevali Cori at the headwaters of the Tigris River," dating as far back as 9,500 BC.

Luminescence dating at the stratified prehistoric site of Attirampakkam, India, has shown that processes signifying the end of the Acheulian culture and the emergence of a Middle Palaeolithic culture occurred at 385 ± 64 thousand years ago (ka), much earlier than conventionally presumed for South Asia1. The Middle Palaeolithic continued at Attirampakkam until 172 ± 41 ka. Chronologies of Middle Palaeolithic technologies in regions distant from Africa and Europe are crucial for testing theories about the origins and early evolution of these cultures, and for understanding their association with modern humans or archaic hominins, their links with preceding Acheulian cultures and the spread of Levallois lithic technologies2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20. The geographic location of India and its rich Middle Palaeolithic record are ideally suited to addressing these issues, but progress has been limited by the paucity of excavated sites and hominin fossils as well as by geochronological constraints1,8. At Attirampakkam, the gradual disuse of bifaces, the predominance of small tools, the appearance of distinctive and diverse Levallois flake and point strategies, and the blade component all highlight a notable shift away from the preceding Acheulian large-flake technologies9. These findings document a process of substantial behavioural change that occurred in India at 385 ± 64 ka and establish its contemporaneity with similar processes recorded in Africa and Europe2,3,4,5,6,7,8,10,11,12,13. This suggests complex interactions between local developments and ongoing global transformations. Together, these observations call for a re-evaluation of models that restrict the origins of Indian Middle Palaeolithic culture to the incidence of modern human dispersals after approximately 125 ka19,21.

S.P. and K.A. thank the Sharma Centre for Heritage Education, the L. S. B. Leakey Foundation, the Earthwatch Institute, the Homi Bhabha Fellowships Council (S.P.: 2000–2002; K.A.: 2014–2016) and the ISRO-GBP program for funding various aspects of the research project, and the Archaeological Survey of India and Department of Archaeology, Government of Tamil Nadu, for issuing licenses. Y.G. benefited from an Institut Universitaire de France grant for field and analytical work. A.K.S. acknowledges the Department of Science and Technology and the Department of Atomic Energy, India, for a J. C. Bose national fellowship and for Raja Ramanna fellowships, respectively. H.M.R. was supported by the contingency grant of the J. C. Bose fellowship awarded to A.K.S. S.P. and K.A. thank M. Taieb for his encouragement.Author informationAffiliations

K.A. and S.P. direct the project, are researching ATM and neighbouring sites and analysed the lithic artefacts; H.M.R., A.D.S. and A.K.S. were responsible for the luminescence sampling and dating; Y.G. analysed the geomorphology and palaeoenvironmental evidence at the site. All authors contributed to the writing of the manuscript.Competing interests

The path from ape to modern human is not a linear one. Hannah Devlin looks at what we know – and what might be next for our species

Hannah Devlin Science correspondent@hannahdev

Mon 12 Feb 2018 00.51 ESTLast modified on Wed 14 Feb 2018 16.33 EST

Shares4,682Our ancestry is still not entirely clear, although there is strong evidence for specimens such as Ardipithecus ramidus, centre, being a direct ancestor or very close to our lineage.Our ancestry is still not entirely clear, although there is strong evidence for specimens such as Ardipithecus ramidus, centre, being a direct ancestor or very close to our lineage. Illustration: Getty, Guardian Design Team

Let’s go back to the beginning. When did we and our ape cousins part ways?Scientists are still working on an exact date – or even a date to within a million years. Like many of the big questions in human evolution, the answer itself has evolved over the past few decades as new discoveries, techniques and technology have provided fresh insights.

Genetics has proved one of the most powerful tools for time-stamping the split with our closest living relative, the chimpanzee. When our complete genomes were compared in 2005, the two species were found to share 98% of their DNA. The differences hold important clues to how long our lineages have been diverging. By estimating the rate at which new genetic mutations are acquired over generations, scientists can use the genetic differences as a “molecular clock” to give a rough idea of when the split occurred. Most calculations suggest it was between four to eight million years ago.We share 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees.We share 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees. Illustration: Getty, Guardian Design Team

This time window is more recent than was originally thought. In the 1960s, fossil evidence led palaeontologists to conclude that a 14m-year-old ape, Ramapithecus, was the earliest ancestor on the human line, based on the shape of its jaw. Subsequent DNA analysis has revealed the split occurred long after that – Ramapithecus is now considered an orangutan ancestor.

So are scientists still looking for the “missing link” between us and other ape species?We still don’t know the identity of our most recent common ancestors with chimpanzees. But scientists tend to dislike the phrase “missing link”, as it implies that evolution proceeds in an orderly, linear fashion with well-defined junctures.

“It gives the sense that there is a single transitional form that magically bridges the gap between a living ape and a living human and suggests we’ve got to fit everything into our line of evolution,” says Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum.Sign up for Lab Notes - the Guardian's weekly science updateRead more

The reality is messier: different branches evolve at different rates; new traits can emerge several times independently; splits can be dragged out over millennia and across continents, with populations diverging and then interbreeding again. Rather than the tree of life it’s more like a dense, thorny bush.

But can we assume that our last shared ancestor with other living apes was something like a chimp?Not necessarily – chimps are not simply unevolved versions of us. Our hypothetical common ancestor would have had a mixture of chimp-like traits, human-like traits and primitive traits that both species eventually left behind. The common ancestor might have walked on all fours, or might have been more upright.

Scientists are still trying to piece together this evolutionary jigsaw puzzle based on a shifting cast of creatures that show up in the fossil record. To complicate things, most of the fossils found probably represent evolutionary side-branches rather than direct ancestors.Quick guideEvolutionary timeline

What are some of the important fossils I should know about?One of the earliest specimens that people believe lies on our lineage – or not far from it – is Sahelanthropus tchadensis, a six to seven-million-year-old fossil found in Chad. It has an ape-like sloping face, prominent brow and very small brain, but small human-like canine teeth. The spinal cord is positioned underneath the skull, rather than towards the back, which some say suggests the creature walked on two legs, but it’s hard to know for sure, since there’s just a skull and a few bones to go on.

Another fossil from around the same period found in Kenya, called Orrorin tugenensis (nicknamed Millennium Man), also features small teeth and a leg bone that indicates primitive bipedalism.Ardipithecus ramidus had a grasping big toe, suggesting she would have been an agile climber.

Ardipithecus ramidus had a grasping big toe, suggesting she would have been an agile climber. Illustration: Getty, Guardian Design Team

Slightly later, at 4.4m years, there is Ardipithecus ramidus (Ardi), a stunningly complete female skeleton found in Ethiopia. Ardi, who had a stocky frame and stood almost four feet (one metre) tall, had gangly ape-like arms and grasping big toe, suggesting she would have been an agile climber. Scientists are divided on the extent to which Ardi walked upright – some say she would have walked on two legs routinely, others think she would have just about managed it if she needed to use her arms to carry something. The pelvis bones are crushed and the skeleton does not include a knee, which could have helped resolve the question more definitively. The strongest evidence for Ardi being a direct ancestor, or very close to our lineage, comes from her teeth, which were small and stubby – more like modern human teeth – and lacked the large fang-like canines of chimpanzees, gorillas and earlier extinct apes.

Then comes “Lucy”, a 3.18m-year-old skeleton, named after the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, the soundtrack to the 1974 excavation. Lucy is viewed as one of the most important discoveries in palaeontology as she is a unique amalgam of primitive features – a chimpanzee-sized brain, a powerful jaw and long, dangling arms – and incredibly human ones. In particular, her legs, knee and pelvis are strikingly similar to our own anatomy, suggesting that by this point our ancestors had gained the distinctive human abilities of being able to walk and run.Australopithecines appeared about four million years ago, and had brains about the size of a chimpanzee’s.

Australopithecines appeared about four million years ago, and had brains about the size of a chimpanzee’s. Composite: Getty, Guardian Design Team

Lucy also helped cement a growing acceptance of Africa as the cradle of humanity, reflected in her species’ scientific name: Australopithecus afarensis. Scientists now think that the australopithecine genus (in the taxonomical hierarchy, genus is one up from species) gradually evolved and spread across southern and eastern Africa – and that one of these species seeded the next phase of our evolution.

Why did our ancestors start walking upright?The traditional “savannah theory” held that shifts in the climate led to dense forests being replaced by sweeping grasslands, creating a new incentive for being able to travel long distances by foot. Yet the transition towards bipedalism appears to have started at least six million years ago – long before the African climate dried out enough to create savannahs. To complicate matters further, a recent analysis of the Lucy fossil suggests that multiple fractures had been sustained shortly before her death, leading some to speculate that she may have died falling out of a tree.

A more recent idea is that bipedalism first emerged in the forests, which would be consistent with the fossil record and may also have a modern-day parallel. Orangutans in Sumatra have been observed moving through the forest canopy by walking along branches on two legs while using their arms to help support their weight or hang, allowing them to move through thinner branches than would otherwise be possible.

Whatever prompted our transition from four legs to two, it seems to have happened over millions of years, probably with a long period of travelling between the ground and the trees.

So once we got the hang of walking, what happened next?The boundary for when our ancestors started counting as human is blurry and somewhat subjective, but scientists place the starting point at species that emerged about 2.4m years ago, which are designated to the Homo genus. We are the sole survivors of this group, but the Earth was once home to a surprising diversity of humans, some of whom crossed paths with our own ancestors.

One of the earliest of these is Homo habilis, who lived in Africa between 2.4m and 1.4m years ago. The name means “handyman” because this species was originally thought to represent the first maker of stone tools (since then, sharpened stones, hammers and anvils dating to 3.3m years ago have been discovered). Homo habilis was short (between one and 1.4 metres or 3ft 4in - 4ft 5in) had a protruding face and massive teeth – earning one fossil the nickname Nutcracker Man. His braincase was about 50% bigger than that of the Australopithicenes, but still only half as big as a modern human’s.Mastery of fire and cookery may have influenced changes in jaw shape.Mastery of fire and cookery may have influenced changes in jaw shape. Illustration: Getty, Guardian Design Team

Homo erectus, 1.7-1.8m years ago, was much closer to modern humans anatomically. He was taller (1.5 to two metres or 4ft 9in - 6ft 1in) and bigger-brained than Homo habilis and had a far smaller jaw and teeth, implying a change in diet. Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham argues that the striking change in jaw anatomy suggests Homo erectus mastered fire and began cooking, allowing more efficient foraging and digestion, freeing up energy to fuel a larger brain. Homo erectus has sometimes been called the first cosmopolitan, due to the impressive geographical range it spanned, with fossils found in Africa, Spain, Italy, China and Indonesia.

The earliest evidence of Homo sapiens (that’s us) comes from fossils dated to just over 300,000 years ago excavated from a cave in Morocco. The bones of at least five people were found alongside tools, gazelle bones and lumps of charcoal. Jean-Jacques Hublin, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig who excavated the fossils, told the Guardian last year: “The face of the specimen we found is the face of someone you could meet on the tube in London.”Advertisement

When did humans leave Africa and spread across the globe?Until recently, converging lines of evidence from fossils, genetics and archaeology suggested that modern humans first spread from Africa into Eurasia about 60,000 years ago. However, a series of recent discoveries – including a trove of 100,000-year-old human teeth found in a cave in China, and a nearly 200,000-year-old jawbone in northern Israel – show that Homo sapiens was venturing across the world far earlier than once thought.

However, these early exits appear to have contributed very little to the genetics of modern day populations – perhaps these groups died out or were killed off by subsequent migratory waves. By triangulating the common ancestors of modern day populations, scientists can show that the ancestors of African and non-African people alive today converge at around 60,000 years ago. As these ancestors travelled across continents they would have encountered a motley assortment of other archaic human species, including the Neanderthals in Eurasia, the Denisovans in Siberia, possibly a dwarf species known as “the hobbit” (Homo floresiensis) on the Indonesian island of Flores and probably other species that we do not yet know about.Human evolution has not been a neat or linear process.FacebookTwitterPinterestHuman evolution has not been a neat or linear process. Composite: Getty, Guardian Design TeamAdvertisement

Did we kill off the Neanderthals?Neanderthals tend to be cast as the low-browed thugs of the prehistoric world, who stood little chance against the superior intellect and hunting prowess of our own ancestors. This may be a case of unfair stereotyping, though. Neanderthals had bigger brains than us, they made jewellery, buried their dead in ancient ceremonies and used pigments – possibly for tribal markings.

It is true, however, that the Neanderthals went into a steep decline around 40,000 years ago, at a time when Homo sapiens from Africa were settling in Eurasia. Perhaps they were struggling to compete for resources, were killed in conflicts or were simply less well adapted to changes in climate that led our own ancestors to move north and east.

There’s a postscript to this story. While the Neanderthals died out as a species, in one sense they are still around today. Interbreeding between modern humans and Neanderthals means that all non-Africans alive today carry about 1-5% Neanderthal DNA. Everyone has acquired slightly different parts of the Neanderthal genome and so collectively there is a substantial fraction (at least 20%) of the Neanderthal genome spread through the living human population.

Wait ... we interbred with another species?Yes, genetics shows that the ancestors of everyone outside of Africa interbred with Neanderthals, probably more than once. There was also interbreeding with another archaic group called the Denisovans. We don’t know much about what these other ancient cousins looked like as their fossils are so fragmented. But from a finger bone found in a cave in Siberia, scientists were able to extract high quality DNA belonging to a Denisovan girl who lived about 41,000 years ago.

Intriguingly, Denisovan DNA shows up only in modern day Indigenous Australians and Papua New Guineans, suggesting that their ancestors must have met the Denisovans on their way across the globe, probably somewhere in south-east Asia.

We can only speculate on the circumstances of these interbreeding events and whether they were peaceful mergers of different tribes or violent encounters.The Earth was once home to a surprising diversity of humans, some of whom crossed paths with our own ancestors.FacebookTwitterPinterestThe Earth was once home to a surprising diversity of humans, some of whom crossed paths with our own ancestors. Illustration: Getty, Guardian Design Team

Could we use cloning to bring our extinct cousins back to life?Theoretically, it would be possible to cut and paste Neanderthal or Denisovan mutations into a modern human genome, and then transfer that into an egg and grow a baby using a surrogate mother. In his book Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves, Harvard geneticist George Church speculates about the possibility of using genetic engineering to resurrect extinct creatures. “If society becomes comfortable with cloning and sees value in true human diversity, then the whole Neanderthal creature itself could be cloned by a surrogate mother chimp – or by an extremely adventurous female human,” Church wrote.Advertisement

In a less ethically fraught version of this experiment, scientists at several labs are currently growing Neanderthalised cells and even organoids – miniature brains and livers – to better understand how Neanderthal biology differed from our own.

When did we learn to speak?This is tricky, as language leaves no direct trace on the fossil record and even today’s neuroscientists haven’t fully figured out how the human brain produces language. Some argue that primitive versions of language pre-date Homo sapiens, based on early evidence of collective hunting and other sophisticated behaviours. For instance, Boxgrove Man, a 500,000 year old Homo heidelbergensis fossil (another extinct relative), was found alongside the remains of now extinct species of rhinoceros, bears and voles, which had signs of having been butchered.

The so-called language gene FOXP2, known to be crucial for speech, also holds clues. The Homo sapiens version of this gene has mutations that are not seen in chimps or other animals. We now know that Neanderthals shared these same mutations. However, modern humans have double the number of mutations in FOXP2’s flanking DNA that determines when the gene is switched on and off, hinting that we could have evolved a qualitatively different capacity for language than our relatives.What next?

Human evolution is not over, but it’s impossible to predict how we’re going to turn out. It’s tempting to assume that we are on an ever-upward intellectual trajectory, but there’s no guarantee of this. In fact, the human brain has become about 5-10% smaller during the past 20,000 years. Perhaps this is comparable to the pattern seen in domestic animals, which almost always have smaller brains than their wild counterparts. “Maybe we’ve domesticated ourselves and those bits of the brain that our ancestors needed aren’t so important any more,” says Stringer.

It’s also possible that we are swapping individual brainpower for collective forms of intelligence. “Our brains are energetically very expensive – they use about 20% of our energy,” says Stringer. “So if evolution can get away with a smaller brain it will.”Further reading

Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature by Thomas Huxley

Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind by Donald Johanson and Maitland Edey

Our Human Story by Louise Humphry and Chris Stringer

Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves by George Church

A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: the Stories in Our Genes by Adam Rutherford

(KWTX) Stone spear points that researchers found during a 12-year excavation at the Debra L. Friedkin site outside of Salado may be the oldest weapons ever found in North America.

The Buttermilk Creek Complex site is named for the family that owns the land on which the discovery was made.

The points discovered by a team led by Texas A&M University researchers are 15,500 years old, predating the Clovis, who for decades were believed to be the first people to have entered the Americas.

There is no doubt these weapons were used for hunting game in the area at that time,” Texas A&M University anthropologist Michael Waters said.

“The discovery is significant because almost all pre-Clovis sites have stone tools, but spear points have yet to be found,” he said.

The points made of chert and other tools were found under a layer of sediment with Clovis and Folsom projectile points that dating showed to be 15,500 years old

Clovis dates back about 13,000 years.

“The dream has always been to find diagnostic artifacts such as projectile points that can be recognized as older than Clovis and this is what we have at the Friedkin site,” Waters said.

The findings of the team, which also includes researchers from Baylor University and the University of Texas, are published in the current issue of Science Advances.

Dr. Steven L. Forman, a professor in the Department of Geosciences at Baylor, is listed among the primary authors.

“The findings expand our understanding of the earliest people to explore and settle North America,” Waters said.

“The peopling of the Americas during the end of the last Ice Age was a complex process and this complexity is seen in their genetic record. Now we are starting to see this complexity mirrored in the archaeological record.”

The points would be about 2,000 years older than artifacts found just a few miles away at the renowned Gault Site in Williamson County that date to more than 13,000 years old.

In a story published on KWTX.com on July 18, Dr. Michael B. Collins, chairman of the Gault School of Archeological Research (GSAR), which oversees the remote archaeological dig site in Williamson County, said a new discovery there shows that site likely was occupied far earlier than the 10,000 to 12,000 years experts initially believed, possibly as far back as 16,000 years.

In the article Collins said Gault bears evidence of continuous human occupation beginning at least 16,000 years ago, and now perhaps earlier, which makes it one of a few but growing number of archaeological sites in the Americas where scientists have discovered evidence of human occupation dating to centuries before the appearance of the Clovis culture at the end of the last ice age about 13,500 years ago.

Those two sites aren’t the only Paleo-Indian sites near Waco because as far back as 12,500 years ago a man and a little girl died and were buried under a limestone outcropping upriver from the old suspension bridge.

About 12,500 years ago early humans found a rock shelter along the Brazos River north of what is now Waco and for the next 11,500 years, at least, someone lived there according to the “signs of native American life everywhere here.”

Horn Shelter 1 and 2 are among the oldest continually inhabited sites ever found in North America.

(KWTX) Stone spear points that researchers found during a 12-year excavation at the Debra L. Friedkin site outside of Salado may be the oldest weapons ever found in North America.

The Buttermilk Creek Complex site is named for the family that owns the land on which the discovery was made.

The points discovered by a team led by Texas A&M University researchers are 15,500 years old, predating the Clovis, who for decades were believed to be the first people to have entered the Americas.

There is no doubt these weapons were used for hunting game in the area at that time,” Texas A&M University anthropologist Michael Waters said.

“The discovery is significant because almost all pre-Clovis sites have stone tools, but spear points have yet to be found,” he said.

The points made of chert and other tools were found under a layer of sediment with Clovis and Folsom projectile points that dating showed to be 15,500 years old

Clovis dates back about 13,000 years.

“The dream has always been to find diagnostic artifacts such as projectile points that can be recognized as older than Clovis and this is what we have at the Friedkin site,” Waters said.

The findings of the team, which also includes researchers from Baylor University and the University of Texas, are published in the current issue of Science Advances.

Dr. Steven L. Forman, a professor in the Department of Geosciences at Baylor, is listed among the primary authors.

“The findings expand our understanding of the earliest people to explore and settle North America,” Waters said.

“The peopling of the Americas during the end of the last Ice Age was a complex process and this complexity is seen in their genetic record. Now we are starting to see this complexity mirrored in the archaeological record.”

The points would be about 2,000 years older than artifacts found just a few miles away at the renowned Gault Site in Williamson County that date to more than 13,000 years old.

In a story published on KWTX.com on July 18, Dr. Michael B. Collins, chairman of the Gault School of Archeological Research (GSAR), which oversees the remote archaeological dig site in Williamson County, said a new discovery there shows that site likely was occupied far earlier than the 10,000 to 12,000 years experts initially believed, possibly as far back as 16,000 years.

In the article Collins said Gault bears evidence of continuous human occupation beginning at least 16,000 years ago, and now perhaps earlier, which makes it one of a few but growing number of archaeological sites in the Americas where scientists have discovered evidence of human occupation dating to centuries before the appearance of the Clovis culture at the end of the last ice age about 13,500 years ago.

Those two sites aren’t the only Paleo-Indian sites near Waco because as far back as 12,500 years ago a man and a little girl died and were buried under a limestone outcropping upriver from the old suspension bridge.

About 12,500 years ago early humans found a rock shelter along the Brazos River north of what is now Waco and for the next 11,500 years, at least, someone lived there according to the “signs of native American life everywhere here.”

Horn Shelter 1 and 2 are among the oldest continually inhabited sites ever found in North America.

(Paul J. Gately contributed to this story)

Thirty miles roughly due east of the stead, as the crow flies. It was the southern edge of the Great Prairie, definitely buffalo territory in ancient times.

I have found a couple of these grinding stones on my place. I expect they might have been used for grinding pecans, which are native to the creek bottom. I don't know for sure.

(KWTX) Stone spear points that researchers found during a 12-year excavation at the Debra L. Friedkin site outside of Salado may be the oldest weapons ever found in North America.

The Buttermilk Creek Complex site is named for the family that owns the land on which the discovery was made.

The points discovered by a team led by Texas A&M University researchers are 15,500 years old, predating the Clovis, who for decades were believed to be the first people to have entered the Americas.

There is no doubt these weapons were used for hunting game in the area at that time,” Texas A&M University anthropologist Michael Waters said.

“The discovery is significant because almost all pre-Clovis sites have stone tools, but spear points have yet to be found,” he said.

The points made of chert and other tools were found under a layer of sediment with Clovis and Folsom projectile points that dating showed to be 15,500 years old

Clovis dates back about 13,000 years.

“The dream has always been to find diagnostic artifacts such as projectile points that can be recognized as older than Clovis and this is what we have at the Friedkin site,” Waters said.

The findings of the team, which also includes researchers from Baylor University and the University of Texas, are published in the current issue of Science Advances.

Dr. Steven L. Forman, a professor in the Department of Geosciences at Baylor, is listed among the primary authors.

“The findings expand our understanding of the earliest people to explore and settle North America,” Waters said.

“The peopling of the Americas during the end of the last Ice Age was a complex process and this complexity is seen in their genetic record. Now we are starting to see this complexity mirrored in the archaeological record.”

The points would be about 2,000 years older than artifacts found just a few miles away at the renowned Gault Site in Williamson County that date to more than 13,000 years old.

In a story published on KWTX.com on July 18, Dr. Michael B. Collins, chairman of the Gault School of Archeological Research (GSAR), which oversees the remote archaeological dig site in Williamson County, said a new discovery there shows that site likely was occupied far earlier than the 10,000 to 12,000 years experts initially believed, possibly as far back as 16,000 years.

In the article Collins said Gault bears evidence of continuous human occupation beginning at least 16,000 years ago, and now perhaps earlier, which makes it one of a few but growing number of archaeological sites in the Americas where scientists have discovered evidence of human occupation dating to centuries before the appearance of the Clovis culture at the end of the last ice age about 13,500 years ago.

Those two sites aren’t the only Paleo-Indian sites near Waco because as far back as 12,500 years ago a man and a little girl died and were buried under a limestone outcropping upriver from the old suspension bridge.

About 12,500 years ago early humans found a rock shelter along the Brazos River north of what is now Waco and for the next 11,500 years, at least, someone lived there according to the “signs of native American life everywhere here.”

Horn Shelter 1 and 2 are among the oldest continually inhabited sites ever found in North America.

I know exactly what you mean. Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world.You don’t know what it is but its there, like a splinter in your mind

The exterior of the rock shelter site of Lapa do Santo in Brazil. Credit: André Strauss

An international team of researchers has revealed unexpected details about the peopling of Central and South America by studying the first high-quality ancient DNA data from those regions.

The findings include two previously unknown genetic exchanges between North and South America, one of which represents a continent-wide population turnover.

The results suggest that the people who spread the Clovis culture, the first widespread archaeological culture of North America, had a major demographic impact further south than previously appreciated.

The authors analyzed genome-wide data from 49 individuals from Central and South America, some as old as 11,000 years. Previously, the only genomes that had been reported from this region and that provided sufficient quality data to analyze were less than 1,000 years old.

By comparing ancient and modern genomes from the Americas and other parts of the globe, the researchers were able to obtain qualitatively new insights into the early history of Central and South America.

Published in the journal Cell, the study was led by researchers at Harvard Medical School; the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History; the University of California, Santa Cruz; Pennsylvania State University; the University of New Mexico; the University of São Paulo and other institutions in Argentina, Australia, Belize, Brazil, Chile, the European Union, Peru and the United States.

The researchers obtained official permits to excavate and conduct analysis on ancient human remains and consulted with local governmental agencies and indigenous communities.

Clovis link in the oldest Central and South Americans

A distinctive DNA type associated with the Clovis culture was found in Chile, Brazil and Belize 11,000 to 9,000 years ago.

"A key discovery was that a Clovis culture-associated individual from North America dating to around 12,800 years ago shares distinctive ancestry with the oldest Chilean, Brazilian and Belizean individuals," said co-lead author Cosimo Posth of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. "This supports the hypothesis that the expansion of people who spread the Clovis culture in North America also reached Central and South America."

However, the Clovis culture-associated lineage is missing in present-day South Americans and in ancient samples that are less than 9,000 years old.

"This is our second key discovery," said co-senior author David Reich, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. "We have shown that there was a continent-wide population replacement that began at least 9,000 years ago."

After the population replacement, there was striking genetic continuity between ancient individuals dating to up to 9,000 years ago and modern people from multiple South American regions. This contrasts with West Eurasia and Africa, where there are few places with such long-standing continuity.

Ancient DNA evidence reveals two unknown migrations from North to South AmericaThis visual abstract depicts the findings of Posth et al., who conducted a large-scale analysis of ancient genomes from Central and South America yields insights into the peopling of the Americas, including four southward migration events …moreCalifornia Channel Island-associated ancestry in the Andes

The second previously unknown spread of people revealed itself in an analysis showing that ancient Californians from the Channel Islands have a distinctive shared ancestry with groups that became widespread in the southern Peruvian Andes by at least 4,200 years ago.

The researchers say this is unlikely to reflect population spread specifically from the Channel Islands into South America. Instead, they hypothesize that the connection between these regions is the result of expansions of people that occurred thousands of years earlier, and that such ancestry became more widespread in the Andes after subsequent events within South America.

"It could be that this ancestry arrived in South America thousands of years before and we simply don't have earlier individuals showing it," said Nathan Nakatsuka, a research assistant in the Reich lab at Harvard Medical School and co-lead author of the study. "There is archaeological evidence that the population in the Central Andes area greatly expanded after around 5,000 years ago. Spreads of particular subgroups during these events may be why we detect this ancestry afterward."

The promise of ancient DNA research in the Americas

The researchers emphasize that their study gives only a glimpse of the discoveries that may come through future work.

To learn about the initial movements of people into Central and South America, they say, it would be necessary to obtain ancient DNA from individuals dating to before 11,000 years ago.

Even for the period between 11,000 and 3,000 years ago that this study focused on, the picture is far from complete.

"We lacked ancient data from Amazonia, northern South America and the Caribbean, and thus cannot determine how individuals in these regions relate to the ones we analyzed," said Reich. "Filling in these gaps should be a priority for future work."

"We are excited about the potential of research in this area," said co-senior author Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. "With future regionally-focused studies with large sample sizes, we could realize the potential of ancient DNA to reveal how the human diversity of this region came to be the way it is today."

Explore further: First peoples: Study finds two ancient ancestries 'reconverged' with settling of South America

ArchaeologyNeanderthals and Denisovans Shared a Siberian Cave for Thousands of Years, New Research SuggestsGeorge DvorskyToday 1:00pmFiled to: Ancient humans

The entrance to Denisova cave.Image: Richard Roberts

Denisova cave in southern Siberia was home to Neanderthals and Denisovans for thousands of years, but questions remain about the timing of their stay. A pair of new studies traces the history of archaic human occupation at the site, showing who lived there and when—including a possible era during which the two now-extinct species hung out together.

Two papers published today in Nature present an updated timeline for the occupation of Denisova cave by Neanderthals and Denisovans. The new research suggests the Denisovans—a sister species to the Neanderthals—made this cave their home for a longer period than Neanderthals, first venturing into the cave as far back as 287,000 years ago. Neanderthals arrived at the site around 140,000 years ago, possibly sharing the space with the Denisovans for thousands of years. It’s further evidence that Neanderthals and Denisovans interbred—and that this co-mingling happened at or near Denisova.

Archaeologists and paleontologists have carefully sifted through Denisova cave for the past 40 years, pulling out various animal and Neanderthal bones. But the real bombshell came in 2010 with the discovery of a finger bone from previously unknown human species, the so-called Denisovans. Genetic analysis suggests the Denisovans were a related species to the Neanderthals, but pretty much everything else about them remains a mystery, such as when they first appeared on the scene and when they died out.

Denisova cave, located at the foot of the Altai mountains in southern Siberia, is thus a critical resource for improving our understanding of not just the Denisovans, but the Neanderthals as well. And possibly our own species, Homo sapiens—though the cave, perhaps strangely, hasn’t yielded a single shred of evidence showing that anatomically modern humans ever lived in there. For Neanderthals and Denisovans, however, Denisova cave served as an important refuge for vast swaths of time.

Vast swaths of time, indeed. We’re not talking about a thousand years here or a thousand years there. Rather, we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of years of occupation. Compiling a timeline of events, such as when the cave was first occupied and by whom, has proven tough, in part due to the large size of the cave and its complex layers of sediment; the cave’s stratigraphy encompasses both the Siberian Middle Paleolithic period (between 340,000 and 45,000 years ago) and the Initial Upper Paleolithic period (roughly 45,000 to 40,000 years ago).

Scientists have also been confronted with the limits of radiocarbon dating, which can only go back 50,000 years. The cave has been inhabited for much longer than that, requiring the use of less reliable dating methods, and by consequence, the positing of unconvincing or controversial timelines.

To overcome these hurdles and limitations, a multidisciplinary team of researchers from around the world, including from Russia, the UK, Australia, Germany, and Canada, spent the past five years analyzing bones and artifacts found in Denisova cave. The researchers used multiple dating techniques, both well-established and cutting-edge, and statistical techniques to date thousands of items at the site, allowing them to piece together the most accurate and detailed timeline to date of human occupation at Denisova cave.

The first study, led by Zenobia Jacobs and Richard Roberts of the University of Wollongong in Australia, presented new dates for Denisova cave sediment deposits. To date these deposits, and by consequence the bones and artifacts within, the researchers used a relatively new technique called stimulated luminescence, in which scientists can tell the last time a mineral grain, such as quartz, was exposed to sunlight. Dates were provided for 103 sediment deposits spanning 280,000 years of history in the cave.

Results from this work showed that Denisovans first occupied the cave around 287,000 years ago, and continued to live in the cave until around 55,000 years ago. Neanderthals arrived at the cave around 193,000 years ago, and they continued to live there up until around 97,000 years ago—an overlap of 96,000 years. The bones of 27 animals, including mammals and fishes, along with 72 species of plants were also analyzed, pointing to a variable climate in the region during the millennia of occupation at the cave. At times, the region was relatively warm, featuring forests of broad-leaved trees, but at other times it was a harsh and desolate tundra-steppe habitat.

A major implication of the Jacobs and Roberts study is the suggestion that Denisovans and Neanderthals hunkered down in the cave together. Now, it’s possible the two species didn’t share the space concurrently, but recent evidence suggests they probably did. In an astounding find from last year, a group of scientists, some of whom are co-authors of this new study, uncovered genetic evidence of a hybrid archaic hominin, dubbed Denisova II, who lived in the cave 90,000 years ago—a girl with a Denisovan dad and a Neanderthal mom. This evidence, along with other lines of research, suggests the two species interbred regularly, and that this wasn’t just an isolated case.

The second study, led by Katerina Douka from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, offered new dates for Neanderthal and Denisovan fossils, along with tooth pendants and bone points found at the site. Douka’s team used multiple techniques to indirectly and directly date thousands of bone fragments and artifacts, including radiocarbon dating and uranium-series dating, both of which take advantage of known rates of radioactive decay.

“This is the first time we are able to confidently assign an age to all archaeological sequence of the cave and its contents” Tom Higham, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford and a co-author of the new study, said in a statement.

The oldest Denisovan fossil suggests this group was present at the site as early as 195,000 years ago, while all Neanderthal fossils, including Denisova II, were dated to between 80,000 and 140,000 years ago. The youngest Denisovan fossil was dated to between 52,000 to 76,000 years ago.“There is considerable uncertainty in some the estimates... however these results help to establish the likely pattern of use over time.”

“The Douka paper is exciting because we knew that Neanderthals and Denisovans both used the Denisova cave, and that the two groups interbred in or near there, but we didn’t know much about the length of time that each group frequented the cave or the length of time that the two groups overlapped in using the cave,” Sharon Browning, a research professor in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Washington who wasn’t involved in the new study, told Gizmodo.

Many of the dates provided in the Douka paper had large margins of error, a consequence of complex stratigraphy (e.g. concerns that some items drifted to lower stratigraphic layers) and an unwillingness to go beyond the available data. But while there is “considerable uncertainty in some the estimates, and the possibility of visits from either group that were earlier or later but didn’t leave a detected trace,” Browning said these results still “help to establish the likely pattern of use over time.”

The artifacts found at the site, such as bone points, pierced teeth, and pendants, were dated to between 49,000 and 43,000 years ago, and they’re now the oldest artifacts ever uncovered in northern Eurasia, according to the Douka paper. Trouble is, these dates are thousands of years after the last evidence of human occupation appears at the cave.

“On the basis of current archaeological evidence, it may be assumed that these artefacts are associated with the Denisovan population,” the authors surmised in the study. “It is not currently possible to determine whether anatomically modern humans were involved in their production, as modern-human fossil and genetic evidence of such antiquity has not yet been identified in the Altai region.”

Denisovans were the likely manufacturers of these items because it’s the simplest explanation, given that Neanderthals were long gone from the cave by then, and no evidence of modern humans exists at the cave, according to the new research. But anthropologist Chris Stringer from the Natural History Museum in the UK isn’t convinced these items belonged to the Denisovans.A pendant being sampled.Image: Tom Higham, University of OxfordRecent Video from GizmodoView More >There was a problem providing access to protected content.(Error Code: 232403)Blackmagic's Pocket Cinema Camera 4K Shoots Incredibly Beautiful, Incredibly Versatile Video1/24/19 10:31AM

“My money would be on early modern humans, who can be mapped elsewhere at this date, for example at Ust’-Ishim in Siberia, but the authors of the Douka paper rather surprisingly argue that it’s most parsimonious to assume that Denisovans were responsible, even though no Denisovans are yet known as late as that in the sequence,” Stringer told Gizmodo. “Only more discoveries and more research can resolve that question satisfactorily.”

Stringer said he liked the two new studies, saying they “bring the latest dating techniques to bear on the stratigraphy, palaeoclimatic records, and the human fossils,” but he said many unresolved issues remain. There’s the possibility, for example, that some, if not all, of the bones were dragged into the cave by carnivores who hunted humans, he said, or that the bones shifted dramatically over the years from their original resting place, throwing off the dating to a considerably degree.

“But at face value it looks like the Denisovans can be placed at least intermittently at the site for about 250,000 years, from close to 300,000 years ago through to about 50,000 years ago, with the Neanderthals also there for periods in-between,” said Stringer. “The occupations seem to concentrate in the warmer periods, reinforcing the view that Denisova cave was probably at the northern limits of occupation for both of these populations. The fact that Neanderthals and Denisovans were both present at times greatly complicates disentangling which humans were responsible for which elements of the archaeology—perhaps sediment DNA studies will eventually help to better map their presence in the cave.”

These uncertainties and the large margins of errors are undeniably frustrating, but these two papers are helping to clear away much of the ambiguity. As time passes, we’re steadily gaining a clearer picture of archaic human occupation at Denisova cave. And damn, is it ever fascinating.